About:

Celeste
Miller has made her career as a solo performer, choreographer, writer,
community arts animator and educator. Her performance
style is a combination of spoken word and movement that plumbs narrative for
physical imagery in juxtaposed connection with text. She toured
extensively with her full-length solo performance repertoire from 1983-2003,
creating over fifty-five original text + movement works. Her work was presented
in venues that included theatres, galleries, cafes, rock clubs and grange
halls. From the avant-garde hot bed of New York City’s downtown dance
scene at PS 122, to Symphony Hall in Atlanta; from the Kennedy Center in
Washington, DC; to the Los Angeles Fringe Festival to homes and schools
throughout rural Montana – Celeste’s work has been witnessed and acclaimed by
critics and audience members alike.

Fellowships
and awards for her work include the National Endowment for the Arts
Choreography Fellowship, The Atlanta Mayor’s Fellowship in the Arts, Individual Artist Fellowship for Solo
Theatrical Performance by the Maryland State Arts Council, Massachusetts New
Playwrights Fellowship; as well as grants and awards from the Rockefeller
Foundation, Atlanta Circle of Drama Critics, City of Atlanta, Fulton County
Arts Council of Atlanta and arts councils in Georgia, Massachusetts and
Maryland. Among the commissions for her work are those from Atlanta's High Museum
of Art, Augusta Museum of Art, Grinnell College, Emory University, American
Festival Project, Smithsonian’s Discovery Theatre, Boston Dance Umbrella,
American Festival Project, Columbia College, New Orleans Ballet Dance
Collective, Florida Dance Festival, and Balance Dance Company.

Celeste’s
work with community arts projects includes the two-year long Nurses
Project, celebrating and honoring the nurses of Cape Ann; and the
three-year American Festival Project Big Sky Spinning created
in collaboration with composer Philip Aaberg drawn from the stories of five
Montana communities. As
Artist-in-Residence, and later co-artistic director with Liz Lerman Dance
Exchange from 1999-2003, she worked on Lerman's national Hallelujah project as
project leader, choreographer and performer. From 2006-2013 she was part of the
artistic team for Headwaters, a
community story play centered in the community of Sautee-Nacochee in Georgia.

Celeste
was the director of Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival’s Choreographer’s Lab focusing
on dance and community engagement from 1993-2010; and has been the co-founder
and director of Jacob’s Pillow Curriculum in Motion since
1993. This nationally recognized program is a leader in the field of exploring
the use of dance-making as a method for learning classroom curricular
material. An article outlining her
particular approach is being published by Cambria Press in "Hybrid Lives
of Teaching Artists in Dance and Theatre Arts: A Critical Reader"

Currently
Celeste is Assistant Professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance at
Grinnell College, a position that allows her to combine her love for teaching
with her investigation of dance as a performing art, cultural practice,
political act and a method for the embodiment of ideas and beliefs. She
continues her work as co-founder and director of Big If Dance
Experiments - an open collective of artists from all disciplines
who gather in Atlanta to explore ideas through writing and embodied expression.
The name ”Big If” comes from Charles Darwin. In a letter to Joseph
D. Hooker in 1871 Darwin wrote, ”It is often said that all the conditions
necessary for the first production of a living being are now present. But
if (and oh, what a big if)….”